As a closure event of action research project Prison Litigation Network on mechanisms of access to legal remedies for detained persons in European prisons, carried out by ten European NGOs and research centres under the coordination of the University of Florence and the European Prison Litigation Network, with the financial support of the European Union’s Justice Programme, the partners of the project organised on 14 and 15 June 2016 a final conference at the European Court of Human Rights on the topic of The Protection of Rights of Detained Persons in Europe.
The action research aimed to report on the impact of the European Convention on Human Rights’ requirements on national legislation and practice as regard the access of prisoners to remedies. The research focused in particular on EU countries that had been condemned by the European Court (through pilot, quasi-pilot) for violations described by the European judge as resulting from structural/systemic problems in their national penitentiary systems and requiring the introduction of effective remedies.The countries concerned by the project are mainly Italy, Romania, Bulgaria and Belgium, whose detention conditions have been judged to constitute inhuman and degrading treatment, and which, according to the judgments handed down against them, are required to set up a complaints mechanism capable of remedying the situation. We also looked at developments in the rights of detainees in Germany, France and the United Kingdom, in Ireland, Spain and the Netherlands. The analysis focused both on national law ( in the light of European requirements) and on the conditions under which it is implemented.
During the final conference, G. Raimondi, president of the Court and three judges presented their view on the evolution of the jurisprudence of the Court relating to prison issues. Academics and members of NGOs also discussed the conditions for taking account of ECtHR requirements in ten member states of the Council of Europe. The programme of the conference can be downloaded below.
The proceedings of the conference were published in 2018 in the Revue des droits de l’homme – N° 14. These proceedings gather contributions from Guido Raimondi, Colombine Madelaine, Elisabeth Lambert Abdelgawad, Sonja Snacken, Simon Creighton, Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque and Sofia Ciuffoletti, Krassimir Kanev and Dyliana Angelova, Ioan Durnescu, Rosaria Pirosa, Anne Simon, Clara Rey Sánchez and Esther Pascual Rodríguez.
